Sunday, August 18, 2013

Out for blood

Painted: Tharn Bloodtrackers

I mentioned the Ilyad War Wolf was the #1 reason I started a Circle Orboros Hordes warband. These savage ladies are reason #2. These hottie barbarian girls by Kev White are some of the best figures made for the game and they got the seal of approval from the GF, who favors Hordes generally above the other figures I paint but ones by Kev White over all comers.

I'll try not to overdo it with too many pics here, but I did take individual pics of all the girls which you can see in this flickr set if you're curious. Here are a few selections:

Painting

At the time (2008) I was painting commissions and really giving my all to each piece. With this personal project I was trying to be a little less demanding on myself and just go with the flow. That attitude kind of broke down painting these girls, though, as I had an extremely particular vision in my mind of how they should look, and in the end I exceeded even my hopes for them, but it took several times over the time I had hoped to spend on them and nowhere was I "going with the flow."

In a perfect world it would often be nice to be able to do a mockup of an idea one has before committing to it on a unit of figures. But that's not a luxury I can afford. Thankfully however, there is so much great art and so many photos that can be used as reference that I can often find a picture that matches what I have in my mind's eye—or exceeds it—and that was the case here. Here's a picture from Ashley wood I used as the inspiration for my flesh tones palette:

There was another picture I used for the overall palette, the greens and browns, and while I have my Circle Orboros inspiration gallery intact in Picasa with ~150 pics in it, that particular picture has gone missing.

At the time I always used a black undercoat, but because I wanted the flesh to really glow I went with white for these. I think that decision was one reason it took me so long to finish these. I would see these French painters come up with a beautiful result over white and I would balk when they said how short a time it took them. For me starting white has always meant more time and less predictability. At any rate, I couldn't be more pleased with these and it just goes to show that despite wanting to make it easier on myself for the personal projects, sometimes oneself is the toughest critic of all, and the hardest to please!

Some brief notes about the paints. The flesh was GW Elf Flesh first and then shading down through Bronzed Flesh to Dwarf Flesh and I believe P3 Khardic Flesh. Then a number of glazes of GW Flesh Wash (these are ~2005 era GW paints) with matte medium, and back up through Elf Flesh to P3 Menoth White Base and Menoth White Highlight, more glazes, more highlights etc. until they really glowed. Glazes made with GW Bestial Brown and GW Snakebite Leather (which is really yellow, and particularly great for glazes) figure predominantly all over the figure (including in the glazes for the flesh, come to think about it), and I also used some of the great P3 browns like Battlefield Brown and Bootstrap Leather (which is much more a subdued middle brown as compared with GW Snakebite leather).